Tag Archives | Childbirth

Receiving a call that you are pregnant with some strangers’ children — nightmare medical scenario of the future? Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

A woman who underwent fertility treatment at a clinic in Rome became pregnant with the twins of another couple after their embryos were mixed up.

Italy’s Health Ministry said it was launching an investigation into the error, which was only discovered when the woman was three months’ pregnant. The mistake happened on December 4, when four different couples were receiving treatment at a specialist fertility unit at the Sandro Pertini Hospital in Rome, Italy’s La Stampa newspaper reported on Sunday. It is not clear whether the mistake led to any of the other women becoming pregnant with the wrong baby.

The local health authority in Rome said it only became aware there was a problem of “genetic incompatibility” between the parents and the embryos on March 27.

Is this what will give your life meaning? In his project I Wanna Deliver A Dolphin, designer Ai Hasegawa envisions solving food shortages, the endangered species crisis, and our urge to reproduce by having us give birth to dolphins via synthetic placentas…and then consume their meat.

The struggle to raise a child in decent conditions is becoming harder due to gross overpopulation and an increasingly strained global environment. Would a woman consider incubating and giving birth to an endangered species such as a shark, tuna or dolphin?
This project imagines a point in the future, where humans will help this species by the advanced technology of synthetic biology. A ‘dolp-human placenta’ that allows a human female to deliver a dolphin is created, and thus humans can become a surrogate mother to endangered species. Furthermore, gourmets would be able to enjoy the luxury of eating a rare animal: an animal made by their own body.

Is amongst dolphins the best way for an infant to emerge into the world? I can see this going horribly wrong. Via Fox News:

A pregnant woman and her husband have traveled to Hawaii where they plan on having a “dolphin-assisted birth,” a water delivery among dolphins. Heather and Adam Barrington, of South Carolina, are preparing for the July arrival of their first child through a series of prenatal and postnatal swims with a pod of dolphins at The Sirius Institute in Pohoa, Hawaii.

The Sirius Institute describes itself as a “a research consortium with the purpose of ‘dolphinizing’ the planet.” They recently set up the Dolphin Attended, Water, Natural and Gentle Birth Center (DAWN), due to what they claim is an increasing demand on their web site for people looking to give birth near dolphins. The Sirius Institute claims that giving birth with dolphins is part of an ancient native Hawaiian practice.

The controversial and brilliant thinker predicted a future in which reproduction would be divorced from sex, with fetuses grown outside the body via technology, which she felt could end the oppression of women. The Villager says:

Shulamith Firestone, who shot to fame at age 25 with her best-selling book, “The Dialectic of Sex,” was found dead in her East Village apartment on Tuesday. She was 67. Suffering from mental illness, she had shut herself off from contact with other people…the cause of death is unclear at this point.

“The Dialectic of Sex” was a key feminist work that presaged today’s issues surrounding birth and science. “No one can understand how feminism has evolved without reading this radical, inflammatory, second-wave landmark,” said Naomi Wolf.

According to Amazon.com, “The book synthesizes the work of Freud, Marx, de Beauvoir and Engels to create a cogent argument for feminist revolution. Identifying women as a caste, she declares that they must seize the means of reproduction — for as long as women (and only women) are required to bear and rear children, they will be singled out as inferior.”

According to Wikipedia, “She advocated the use of cybernetics to carry out human reproduction in laboratories as well as the proliferation of contraception, abortion and state support for child-rearing; enabling [women] to escape their biologically determined positions in society.

It's hard to think of a baby being violent or destructive, but the seeds of violence may be planted before a child is born, according to research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Attention to health factors as early as the prenatal stage could prevent violence in later life, reports Penn Nursing Assistant Professor Jianghong Liu, PhD, RN, in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior.
Recent research demonstrates a biological basis of crime, says Dr. Liu. "'Biological' does not mean only genetic factors," she explains, "but also health factors, such as nutritional deficiency and lead exposure, which influence biological processes." Dr. Liu's study emphasizes the prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal periods, which are critical times for both a child's neuro-development and for environmental modifications ...

Rats infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii do crazy things. They find the scent of cat urine sexy and attractive, they don’t run from the actual beasts; they are more active in running wheels, which might indicate that the parasite induces increased activity which may more readily attract a cat’s attention. When an infected rat is eaten by a cat, the T. gondii is passed on in the cat’s feces to infect again. T. gondii can only reproduce inside the cat. Great survival strategy on the part of the parasite, this trick of making the rat no longer fear cats — now that’s really building a better mouse-trap! Did this strategy evolve by adaptive selection, or is it just something that happened?

[disinformation ed.’s note: the contributor dug deep in the crates for this 2006 story]

Giving birth was an orgasmic experience for one woman, says Anastasia Stephens, writing in the Times:

For Katrina Caslake, 44, giving birth was not the terrifying, painful ordeal most women experience. Far from it. The midwife, from Wallington, South London, says she found it blissful, even orgasmic.

“I found giving birth very sensual,” says Caslake, who didn’t take painkillers for the birth of her two sons, Aaron, 18, and Tomas, 17. “All my erogenous zones were stimulated. And I had a definite climax. I was doing the most feminine thing a woman can do and it felt fantastic.”

It was her “pleasurable experience” that led her to train as a midwife. “I knew I wasn’t unique,” says Caslake, who helps to run Yours Maternally, an independent midwifery service. “By encouraging women to trust and relax in their bodies during birth, I can help them to experience less painful, more pleasurable births.”

It’s an approach that’s also encouraged at the Birth Centre, in South London, where Nathalie Mottershead, a midwife, encourages sensual birth.